Digby Walton was once the heir to an English pottery company. Now in old age he contemplates the history of that company as he reflects upon the modern world. His own heir, his son Theo, would rather ignore history completely and lose himself in smoky jazz clubs with his trumpet. Theo wants to live entirely inside the perfection of songs, but will reality let him?

Meanwhile Digby's next-door neighbor, Daisy Gresham, famed as one of the great film beauties of her day, seeks her own elusive son, who is perilously engaged in the international anarchist movement.

Alan Wall's novel weaves back and forth between the present and the twentieth century that formed it, its wars and industries, industries that once propelled an empire but now appear in permanent decline, asking constantly what art contributes to life and whether life can ever survive for long without it. In the tradition of Louis Begley and John Updike, China is a novel about life and looking back.